Greek Day lecture 2005

Please take note of Vancouver Greek Day: A Cultural Odyssey in Kits
http://www.greekday.com/
Hellenic Cultural Week, June 19-26, 2005

SFU's C. S. Morrissey delivered a free public lecture
on Monday, June 20, 8:00-9:00pm at the Hellenic Cultural Center, Upstairs Hall
4500 Arbutus St. (at W. 32nd Ave.)

What was so special about the ancient Greeks? Have we not surpassed whatever great things they may have achieved or even started first? This lecture will give you three good reasons why we should remain in awe of the genius of the Greeks. Prepare to be surprised. You will hear three reasons you may not have expected. But these three marks of Greek genius must serve to inspire us still today.

Bruce Thornton recently observed: 'The centrality of the ancient Greeks to the foundations of Western Civilization once was an obvious truth, one memorably expressed by the poet Shelley when he said, "We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their roots in Greece." One hundred and twenty years later, Edith Hamilton agreed, writing in her classic The Greek Way, "There is no danger now that the world will not give the Greek genius full recognition. Greek achievement is a fact universally acknowledged." Yet it took a mere fifty years to prove Hamilton wrong about that universal recognition, for in many colleges and universities today the phrase "Greek genius" is considered reactionary and ethnocentric, nowhere more so than among the professional classicists who are the presumed caretakers of that tradition.'

C. S. Morrissey, a certified member of the Institute for Advanced Physics, teaches Ancient Greek at Simon Fraser University.

Suggested Further Reading (after the Lecture)

Eric Gans, Originary Thinking: Elements of Generative Anthropology (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1993) ISBN 0804721149
Eric Gans, “The Culture of Resentment,” Philosophy and Literature 8.1 (1984): 55-66.
René Girard, A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) ISBN 1587318601
Victor Davis Hanson, The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization, 2nd edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) ISBN 0029137519
Joseph Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (St. Augustine's Press, 1998) ISBN 0865972109
Plato, Complete Works (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997) ISBN 0872203492
Anthony Rizzi, The Science Before Science: A Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century (Bloomington, Indiana: Institute for Advanced Physics Press, 2004) ISBN 1418465046
Roger Scruton, Xanthippic Dialogues (St. Augustine's Press, 1998) ISBN 1890318949
Bruce Thornton, “Defending the Greeks,” (February 28, 2005 talk at California State University, Sacramento): <http://victorhanson.com/articles/thornton031005.html>
Bruce Thornton, Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000) ISBN 1893554570
William A. Wallace, The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996) ISBN 0813208602